1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technologies by which questions and answers are exchanged between a plurality of users on a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, mobile devices such as PDAs (Personal Digital (Data) Assistants) and mobile telephones have become increasingly popular in addition to desktop-type personal computers and notebook-type personal computers, and information sharing and exchanging systems that utilizes broadband connection or nailed-up connection to networks have become feasible. A bulletin board system is one of those systems which is expected to be a means to share knowledge to solve particular problems among company employees on intranets or consumers on the Internet by collecting their voices quickly. Here, the bulletin board system means a system in which questions and the answers thereto posted from users on a network are published through an electronic bulletin board to enable the users to exchange text-based questions and answers between the users.
With the bulletin board system, however, it is unclear how important a question posted by a user A is for other users who participate in the bulletin board; moreover, it is uncertain what effect the answers to the question will have on the other users, or how or by whom the answers are made use of. For these reasons, those users who truly need information are often unable to access the Q&As that may meet their needs, and thus it is difficult to effectively share knowledge among them.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a technology to offer required information to the users who has a need for the information. It is another object of the present invention to provide a technology to enable the users who has a need for required information to obtain the information quickly.